a Joe Linker book

Alma Lolloon is writing a book about her five husbands, and she reads installments of her work in progress to her surprised knitting group. The group’s boisterous feedback influences Alma’s work in progress as she tells her story from childhood to old age, improvising to find her pitch and style.

Common keyboard signs and punctuation marks become characters in this experimental children’s book for readers of all ages. Scamble and Cramble are two cats observing, interpreting, and commenting on daily events. Other animals come and go, too, changing with text and form and story. “Scamble and Cramble” may work best for independent middle grade readers, and younger children will enjoy with an older guide. The book’s Concrete Poetry techniques use standard keyboard symbols and readily accessible font types and sizes. Readers may be encouraged to explore more the world of concrete poetry.

“Penina’s Letters” takes place in the beach cities along Santa Monica Bay, with a fictionalized beach town named Refugio squeezed in between El Porto and Grand Avenue. The town of Refugio replaces the iconic towers and power plant between the water and the dunes of El Segundo. Draft segments of “Penina’s Letters” appeared in The Boulevard (Summer 2012), a publication of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters. Parts of the “How to Surf” chapter appeared in different form on Berfrois on September 29, 2015.

“All the fuss and hullabaloo, and a war just peters off. But none of that matters here. This isn’t going to be about the war. I don’t have any gory stories, nothing painting war as hell. Hell is an ocean with no waves. This is going to be about surfing and how I paddled out to live on the water after throwing Penina’s letters off the end of the Refugio jetty.”

Penina and Salty return to Refugio, a fictional beach town on Santa Monica Bay, in “Coconut Oil,” a sequel to “Penina’s Letters.” Forty years have passed since the close of “Penina’s Letters,” and Salty is again our first person narrator, and “Coconut Oil” continues an experimental narrative form – as Sal hands the mic off to several other characters and we are brought up to date on Refugio. The themes of “Coconut Oil” include aging, housing and homelessness, gentrification, and how we occupy ourselves over time. The style is experimental in a way a common reader might enjoy. The back cover photo for “Coconut Oil” was taken from the northbound Coast Starlight train as it passed by the point at Refugio Beach, California, a campground 26 miles north of Santa Barbara, in the late 70’s. The front cover photo, more recent, shows the author’s shadow over a tree hollow holding mushrooms that look like bird eggs.